Peccavi, Mea Culpa….

Day is breaking.

A whisper of crickets across the digital fields…

slowly, A tumbleweed (Russian Sedge) travels from one side of the screen to the other…

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve last posted.  I have, perhaps unreasonably, felt the need to explain my abscence from the ether.  Which is an odd impulse for a blogger to have.  I am, essentially, talking to myself on here. It is nice to imagine an audience, out there, hanging on my every word, but that is far from the case.

But explain I must: I am job hunting.  I am currently looking for a teaching position, preferable high school, preferable private.  These positions are rare, and fought over. In my cynicism over the job hunting process I had initially thought to limit my expression of opinion, to stifle my own conversation.  This instinct was incorrect.  Any school that can’t deal with a teacher having a personal blog, wand it’s associated opinions, wouldn’t be somewhere I wanted to work.

But for know I need employment, so this blog will remain inadequately updated with my random opinions…and if you are an employer I hope you hire me.

Cyber-etiquette

I feel awkward on Facebook.  I am always unsure how to respond to the various and varied forms of contact that permeate Facebook. How long do you wait to respond to a friend request? I see a few possible responses here, all with downsides.  If you respond instantly people now you were surfing Facebook, when perhaps you should have been doing something more constructive. If you wait a few hours then you risk offending the person by not responding sooner.

I think the problem stems from the incredible expansion of cyber communication in general. It seems like that within 10 years, email, Facebook, and linked-in has exploded as a means of communications.   It is essential the wild west on the internet. There hasn’t been time for a system of etiquette to solidify, or even form. Everyone chooses to respond in different ways to the same things.

Take another piece of technology, the phone. Phones came out around the turn of the century and gradually spread from there.  It took perhaps 50 years for them to become ubiquitous. By that point there was a standard way to greet people. However answers says hello, etc.  Now with caller id, I generally know who is calling. Yet, I still follow the same conventions.  Try answering the phone by greeting the person by name, it freaks them out.

Dendrophilia

So, it’s been awhile. Life caught up with me and I haven’t been blogging as much as perhaps I should.  Mayhaps, I haven’t been in a contemplative mood or just burnt out from grad school, either way I’m writing something here.

I was going to write about the Georgia performance standards and why mandated teaching is wrong is some many ways, but I’m going to talk about trees instead.

Actually, one tree in particular. A sprawling maple broader than it was tall who’s limb spread crazily apart, a tree airy yet permanent. It was probably around 70 years old, if not older. I say was because that tree that stood in front of my childhood home for 70 years, was cut down mainly by mistake.  Luckily, the arborist has agreed to fix the problem. Eventually. And we’re still debating what kind of tree we want to put in.

However, what surprised me most was how affected I was by the loss of that tree. I wasn’t unmanned, weeping openly. But I was saddened. I never knew how attached I could get to an inanimate object.  The lawn was empty without its physical presences. The shrubs seems drawfed (side note: most of our plantings are necessarily shade plantings, and most of those plants will probably die.) without the balance.  I’ve been so used to the house with the tree in front that it feels odd, like somewhere else.

But, I suppose this is the nature of things: trees fall. New ones grow. Only to fall again. It’s all cyclical.  No beginning or end. Chicken and egg, at the same time.  Think of it from a trees perspective: bidding their time as sap slowly flows, inch by inch and foot by foot. Higher and higher. It is enough to make a human life seem short and ordinary.  Here’s to planting a new tree and all that entails.

Is college necessary?

College graduation happened recently and my Facebook feed was flooded with the pictures and status updates as my college friends graduated. They reminded me of the enthusiasm and terror of that time for me. It was with incredible naivety that I left the bastion of academia to return to my childhood home.  It was a definite scenario of “failure to launch”, “The problem with 20 somethings” or any of a plethora of other distinct problems facing todays college graduate. It  seemed like college had prepared me for so little, as to make my return to the real world terrifying.  Down the line, distanced from the situation, it brought to mind a slew questions. Chief among them being: Is college necessary?

Obsessives

Crossfit seems to attract analytical thinkers with addictive personalities. I’ve heard of several stories where addicts with various substances and activities, have supplanted those habits with crossfit.  There is an additional trend with crossfitters of all stripes (or at least in the circles I hang out in) to delve into over-analysis.

Zombies

I just got finished reading World War Z by Max Brooks. It is an excellent book, one that I highly recommend. It is ne of the few books to actually make me a little scared by simply reading it. It is a damn good book.

And it made me think, what would I do in a zombie apocalypse? Would I survive, do I have enough skills (camping, survival, and otherwise) to let me survive? It’s an interesting problem to consider from an academic prospective. And one I’d never want to face. Zombie’s are truly terrfying.

Here’s the author speaking about his fear of zombie’s:

“They scare me more than any other fictional creature out there because they break all the rules. Werewolves and vampires and giant sharks, you have to go look for them. My attitude is if you go looking for them, no sympathy. But zombies come to you. Zombies don’t act like a predator; they act like a virus, and that is the core of my terror. A predator is intelligent by nature, and knows not to overhunt its feeding ground. A virus will just continue to spread, infect and consume, no matter what happens. It’s the mindlessness behind it.”

The book ends with the US reforming itself as an agrarian democracy, with a rigidly enforced system of rules and a stressed importance on the blue collar yeoman world. I think it’s interesting to consider brook’s position on the post zombie world, in that the express his views on the pre zombie world. That the post zombie world is one based in “blue collarism” an essentially return to fundamental craft based skills, rather than the knowledged based economy we live in now. And with that I have to agree.

Merit Pay: Pro? Con?

I refuse to apologize for my lack of blogging. I like to produce interesting content and I don’t feel like I can do that, I ain’t going write it. You’re welcome.

Merit Pay is a hot button issue to “improve” education. Essential it means treating teachers like every other type of corporate drone and basing they’re pay on their performance. Pundits say it will cause teachers to focus on teaching to the test, reduce cooperation and decrease teaching in general. Those in favor say that merit pay increases pay for something teachers should be doing already, teaching well.

Easy Button…

A problem this is prevalent in the education class I’m taking is that more often than note, there are no easy answers.  This stems from two reason. The first being that the issues we discuss (funding, testing, merit pay) are complicated. The second is that Dr. Boyles requires critically enquiry, a theme which I’m thinking may become de riguer in graduate school. And critically enquiry when you’re coming from a very small knowledge base very quickly runs up against the limits of your imagination and intelligence. The solution is to expand your knowledge base or to give up.  Sink or Swim.

But, I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve left that class and wondered “How the hell am I supposed to fix that?” What I would really like is just to be told what to do and move on. It is all too easy to be a sheep.

Short thoughts

Not short as in stature, just in brevity. I’ve got a lot of thoughts moving around my head and these are a few I can put words to.

Double Unders, a rumination

For those who don’t know, and I can’t imagine anyone reading my blog who doesn’t know what a double under is, but it is a single jump rope where in the rope goes under twice.

It is undoubtedly one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to master.